Strange Bedfellows
by moonlighten
Summary: The GCPD is struggling, and when Jim Gordon reluctantly approaches Oswald Cobblepot for help, their meeting takes an unexpected turn. (Gobblepot. Canon divergence starting just prior to ep 5.01/day 87)
1. Chapter 1

Jim had expected his arrival at City Hall to be met with a hail of bullets, or at the very least a sabre-rattling display of force meant to remind him exactly who holds the power here.

But, for the most part, he is ignored. The building is throng with whey-faced men and women dressed in drab military green uniforms, but they keep their heads bowed as they scurry past Jim, seemingly intent on performing whatever thankless tasks Cobblepot has assigned them to the exclusion of all else.

There are armed guards scattered in and amongst them, posted at doorways and patrolling the corridors, but though their eyes narrow suspiciously when they see Jim, they make no move to challenge him either, even when he climbs the broad staircase which sweeps up from the ground floor to the Mayor's office where, Jim is certain, he will find Cobblepot, playing at being Lord of this little fiefdom he has carved out of their wounded city.

The two guards stationed outside the office are burlier than the rest, and near identical in every particular, from the top of their buzz cuts to the tips of their spit-shined boots. They look like a pair of matched statues, and both stand immobile at rigid attention until Jim is almost toe to toe with them. The one on the right takes an economical step back then, leaving just enough of a gap between his colossal shoulders and those of his partner that Jim can shuffle past them, side-long, and reach the door.

It seems clear now that Jim's visit is expected, if not, perhaps, exactly welcome.

Cobblepot's behaviour seems to confirm that supposition. He is sitting hunched behind a wide desk at the far end of the cavernous room, poring over a stack of papers, and he doesn't so much as glance up from them as Jim approaches him.

Even at a distance, Jim can tell that most of the pages are blank, but Cobblepot pretends absorption for a protracted moment, nonetheless, and the silence between them stretches uncomfortably long. Jim refuses to be unsettled by it as Cobblepot doubtless intends, though. He stands at an easy parade rest and waits quietly until Cobblepot's always scant supply of patience runs out and he feigns noticing him for the first time.

"Captain Gordon!" Cobblepot's smile is expansive, but his eyes are cold: shark-like and predatory. "What an unexpected pleasure." He gestures towards the chairs set on other side of desk. "Please, take a seat."

Jim wants to be able to flee, fight if he has to, if things turn sour. Sitting would only put him at a disadvantage. He shakes his head. "I'd prefer to stand."

Cobblepot's smile doesn't diminish, but it does turn a little brittle around the edges. "As you wish." He restlessly shifts his weight in his own chair, clearly made uneasy by the small power disparity inherent in their respective positions, and then launches himself to his feet in a sudden rush. "What can I do for you?" he asks, circling around the desk to stand in front of Jim.

"Word is, you have a stockpile of ammunition, and…"

And the GCPD is running low, perilously so. All the easily accessible parts of the city have been picked clean long since, and Jim doesn't have enough officers under his command to risk them quite yet branching out into the territories that have gone dark; that might as well be marked on his map as 'Here Be Dragons'. Cobblepot is, at least, a known quantity – a familiar devil – for all that he might also be a last resort. Still, the admission is a damning one, dangerous, and the words stick fast in Jim's throat.

"And you expect me to share it," Cobblepot guesses, when Jim finds himself unable to continue voicing his request. "Out of the goodness of my heart, maybe?" He laughs, jagged and mirthless. "A sense of civic duty."

"Of course not," Jim says.

"Well, then what do you propose to give me in return? I can't imagine you have anything I need" – Cobblepot's gaze skims down the full length of Jim's body, swift and dismissive – "or want."

Harvey had insisted that Jim would just need to bat his eyelashes at Cobblepot in order to persuade him hand over bullets by the fistful, but Jim had known better. They're long past that, he thinks; long past the days when Cobblepot was so puppyishly, pathetically, eager to earn his friendship that a smile or kind word would have him virtually begging to fall on his own sword in return.

"I'll have to owe you a favour," he says, because he hasn't got anything else to offer other than this one last, desperate vestige of those times. There is nothing of any real value left at the precinct beyond a rapidly dwindling supply of canned goods and an archive of police files that are, for the moment, only likely to be useful as kindling.

"Ah, the old quid pro quo. That worked out so _well_ for me in the past, didn't it?" Cobblepot sneers. "What did your _favours_ ever get me? Locked up in Arkham." He begins pacing back and forth, obviously agitated, each uneven, lurching step bringing him closer and closer to Jim. "Stuck on blimp for hours. Abandoned—"

Jim holds up a hand reflexively before they collide, pressed flat and quelling against Cobblepot's chest. Cobblepot stops instantly, his breath leaving him in a hitching gust. Beneath Jim's palm, his heart flutters, beating rapidly like the wings of a bird trapped inside the cage of his ribs.

Experimentally, without clear thought, Jim trails his fingers over the stiff, starched lines of Cobblepot's lapel and shirt collar to the slim, pale column of his neck, and then up to the pulse point under the hinge of his jaw, chasing a weaker echo of that same rhythm.

Something churns in pit of Jim's stomach, hot and acrid. He tells himself it's revulsion, just as he always does.

Cobblepot's eyes are stunned wide and wondering, and his pale skin suffuses with blood; a blush rising from the small point of contact formed by Jim's fingertips to spread across his face, painting his cheeks with blooms of splotchy colour.

"Jim?" he says, and his voice is so soft, so hesitant, that the question is scarcely more than a slight stirring of air.

He must have been lying earlier, there _is_ still something he wants from Jim; an invitation clear in the parting of his lips, and the teasing flicker of his tongue as he wets them.

Jim meets them with his own, acting purely on instinct again. At first, thinks he must have misjudged Cobblepot's interest, because he stands immobile and unresponsive within the circle of Jim's arms for an agonisingly long moment. But then he inhales sharply through his nose, and the breath seemingly stirs him into life once more.

Pressing even closer, and his mouth starts to move, tentative and clumsy, against Jim's. He appears uncertain what he should do with his hands, though, and they graze the front of Jim's jacket, and his waist, before finally settling at his hips. He grabs them roughly, fingers clawing into the thin skin just above the bone, and his grip tightens to the point of pain.

When Jim winces, and pushes at his hands in an effort to loosen them, Cobblepot rears back, his expression flickering uncertainly. At first, he looks stricken, then briefly contrite, and thereafter his face settles into harsh, unhappy lines.

"This is new low for you," he hisses. "Prostituting yourself for GCPD."

"I wasn't," Jim is quick to assure him, shocked by the insinuation.

"Oh, so you were overcome by… by desire, then?" Cobblepot's voice is unnaturally high, and lilting with mockery. Whether it's directed towards himself or Jim is unclear. "And you just couldn't help yourself?"

Jim's actions had so far preceded his thoughts that he cannot even begin to account for them, but as his stomach is still burning, his skin itching with the longing to touch, it seems as though that could be as good an explanation as any. He shrugs. "Maybe."

Cobblepot glares at him for a beat longer, and then turns abruptly on his heel and heads back behind his desk. "I don't believe you," he says, head bowing down over his pile of useless papers again as he rifles through them with brusque flicks of his wrist. "Get out."

"Oswald, I—"

"Get out!"

Cobblepot practically screams the words, and the sound attracts the two hulking guards, who rush into the room, guns raised. Oswald doesn't look up at their entrance, but gives a minute shake of his head. They stand down, but don't retreat, and both watch Jim closely and with an unnerving sort of anticipatory fervour, as though searching for an excuse to shoot him.

Jim leaves before they have chance to find one.  
-

* * *

-  
Jim tries not to dwell upon what happened in Cobblepot's office, but on those rare occasions the memory does creep into his mind unbidden, it's accompanied by the troubling thought that Cobblepot is likely to be embarrassed, his pride bruised, and longing for retaliation.

For two days, nothing comes, but on the third day, he finds a wooden crate left on the steps in front of the precinct. There is a jaunty length of purple ribbon tied around it, upon which is attached a creamy white envelope, addressed to him.

The card within it is unmarked save for a short message, written in a neat, old-fashioned hand.

_Given what happened in our meeting, I can only conclude that your circumstances must be exceptionally desperate. I hope this small gift goes some way towards helping._ _\- O.C.C_

The crate does not contain the bomb Jim had feared when he first saw it, but several metal ammunition cases full of bullets.


	2. Chapter 2

Jim is bone-deep weary, exhausted, and feels it even more keenly for not being able to let it show.

He is the first to rise every morning, last to take to his makeshift bed at night, because he has a precinct full of officers and displaced, desperate civilians looking to him for guidance and leadership, and there's always someone or something that urgently needs his particular attention every damn minute of the day, seemingly.

His only refuge is his office, where he can shut the door behind him, draw the blinds down low, and, if not shut out the world, at least muffle its demands for a while.

Today, however, not even the office can provide any kind of respite. The precinct's ancient and ramshackle heating system has become even more erratic of late thanks to their recent power cuts and three months of mechanical neglect, and it alternates between burning like the surface of a small sun and spluttering into tepid dormancy.

Last night, it had given up the ghost entirely and the air is frigid as a consequence. Jim is wearing a scarf, gloves and overcoat, but still he can't stop shaking and he can't concentrate on the report he'd ostensibly retired to his office to look over.

He's read the same paragraph four times now without it once making any sense, and he reaches for the cup of coffee Harvey had brought him not even ten minutes beforehand, needing its heat just as much as the caffeine.

It's already stone cold but he drinks it anyway, down to the bitter dregs of undissolved instant coffee granules and powdered milk that are all they have left in their stores now.

His head isn't any clearer afterwards, his blood any less sluggish, and he eyes the dark sludge lurking at the bottom of the cup speculatively, driven by desperation to consider spooning it up and eating it in the vain hope that it might help to restore a small measure of the energy he so desperately needs.

His deliberations are interrupted by one of his officers, who pokes her head around the door to tell him that Penguin had barged into the precinct uninvited and despite their best efforts to stop him.

Jim rubs at his dry, gritty eyes with the thumb and forefinger of one hand, and then pinches the bridge of his nose between them, trying to ease the twinge of pain there that heralds an incoming headache. "What does he want?"

"I don't know, sir. He said that he doesn't want to speak about it to anyone but you, and he won't leave until he has."

Of course he won't, because Jim's day wasn't quite crappy enough, apparently. He groans, strips off his scarf and gloves, chafes a little warmth back into his numb hands, and then strides out of the office as quickly and surely as the dull ache in his chilled joints will allow.

Cobblepot is standing leant up against one of the desks nearest to the precinct's front door, his two matched goons stationed behind him, and surrounded by a loose semicircle of police officers, who are watching him warily, their hands hovering close to their holsters.

He ignores them so completely, they might as well not be there at all, and when Jim approaches him, his greeting is pitched low and intimate, as though they're the only two people in the room. "Jim," he says, and it's scarcely more than a sighed breath. "How are you, old friend?"

"What do you want, Cobblepot?" Jim asks, deliberately overloud, because several of his officers have turned towards him, their expressions curious.

Cobblepot pushes himself away from the desk and walks towards Jim, motioning for his bodyguards to stay where they are when they look set to follow him.

His mouth is curled upwards slightly at the corners, relaxed and easy but not quite a smile. There is tension evident around his eyes, though, pulling the thin skin there taut, and his grip on the handle of the umbrella he is using in lieu of a stick is so firm that his knuckles are blanched bone white.

"City Hall has been attacked," he says quietly, almost whispers, when he draws close enough that it's reasonable to suppose that he won't be overheard, despite the proximity of their sizeable audience.

"Who by?" Jim asks.

Cobblepot rolls his eyes. "I don't know, which is why I'm here. At the _precinct_. I need" – he draws the words out slowly and deliberately, and with clear relish – "a detective."

Jim doesn't even need to think about his answer. "Well, I can't spare any."

"And here I thought the GCPD was supposed to 'protect and serve' this city. Or is that a duty that doesn't apply to me, somehow," Cobblepot says, and he pouts petulantly, drawing Jim's gaze inexorably down to his lips.

_I've kissed those lips_, bobs like a particularly unpleasant piece of flotsam to the surface of Jim's thoughts. His stomach roils again, perhaps because the awful coffee is settling uneasily there, but probably not.

He pushes the stray thought down ruthlessly hard – he's done a good job of supressing the memory these past two weeks and doesn't want to backslide into bad habits – and wrenches his eyes back up to meet Cobblepot's. They're creased at their corners now, and sharp with what looks to be anxiety, even though there isn't a single betraying trace of that emotion visible in his face otherwise.

"Not right now, no," Jim says. "I just don't have the manpower. Can't you get some of your people to look into it? They're better equipped than mine, anyway, and—"

"But yours are much better trained," Cobblepot says and his smile is smug, likely believing that he has successfully backed Jim into a corner that he can't possibly escape from.

Jim shakes his head. "I can't, Oswald. I—"

Cobblepot's nostrils flare wide and his mouth pinches tight. "You owe me a favour, Jim," he hisses.

Jim should have known that the bullets weren't really a gift; that they weren't truly free.

Still, he can't countenance sending any of his officers with Cobblepot, leaving the civilians in their care with less protection than they deserve. They could be walking into a trap, being led on a wild goose chase that Cobblepot has devised for unfathomable reasons of his own, or investigating a real attack that actually happened, but whatever Cobblepot's true motives, Jim should be the only one paying the price for the ill-considered, rash promise he'd made when he last visited City Hall.

"I'll come with you," he says. "Alone."

Cobblepot looks sickeningly happy to hear that, and the sight makes Jim regret his words instantly, though it's already too late to take them back.  
-

* * *

-  
The small park that abuts the back of City Hall has begun returning to a state of wilderness. The once carefully regimented plants are shapeless and straggling without a gardener's hand to tame them, the grass knee-high, and the water in the centrepiece fountain is stagnant and choked green with duckweed.

"So, the attack came from here?" Jim asks, scanning his surroundings carefully. There are no signs of life as far as he can see save for a few squirrels bounding around in the tops of the trees, and a scattering of pigeons wheeling through the sky above them.

"Some of my people saw a bright light out here," Cobblepot says. "Then they heard a series of explosions, and then a loud crack."

"And…?" Jim asks when it becomes apparent that Cobblepot isn't going to add anything more without prompting. "Then what happened?"

Cobblepot shrugs. "That's what I want you to find out, Jim."

Most likely a wild goose chase, then. If anything of Cobblepot's had been stolen, or any of his people had been hurt or killed, he would surely already know about it. If he wants to waste his favour on wasting some of Jim's precious time, then that's his prerogative, and, really, Jim is in no position to complain about the loss. Cobblepot could have used the leverage Jim had unthinkingly presented him in order to force him to perform a far more nefarious or unpalatable task, after all.

Jim starts his search at the far end of the park, working his way from the far end of the park towards City Hall, methodically searching beneath every bench, overhanging branch and overgrown shrub in search of evidence that something, _anything_ out of the ordinary had occurred there.

Cobblepot trails after him the whole time, always a couple of feet or so behind him, and silent save for the thump, tap, thump, tap of his uneven footsteps.

When they're practically on City Hall's back doorstep, Jim finds a jumble of blackened sticks, piled in the centre of a wide circle of charred grass.

When he stops to look at it more closely, Cobblepot moves to his side, standing just a little too close so that their shoulders brush against each other glancingly. Jim instinctively shies away from the contact and, thankfully, Cobblepot doesn't try to lean back into it afterwards.

"Ah," he says, eyes following the direction of Jim's gaze, "I presume this is what you law enforcement professionals would call a clue."

"Someone made a bonfire here," Jim says. "So that would be your people's 'bright light', and these" – he toes at a couple of scorched cardboard cylinders, half-hidden in a tall thicket of weeds; the remains of firecrackers – "would be the source of the 'explosions'."

"And the loud crack?"

Jim quickly glances around himself, spots a shattered pane of glass at the bottom of a nearby window.

"Would be a breaking window," he says, pointing it out to Cobblepot. "Can we get in that room?"

"Of course," Cobblepot says, and then he scurries off to rap his knuckles against the Hall's back door in a complex series of knocks that is clearly a code of some sort.

The door swings open to reveal the bulky form of one of Cobblepot's guards. He bobs his head deferentially when he sees Cobblepot outside, and then steps back to allow him to enter the Hall.

Cobblepot gestures for Jim to follow him into the corridor beyond, and from there to another door which opens on what appears to be a storeroom, filled with surplus furniture covered with dust sheets.

One of them has been removed from the table it had been draped over, and now lies in a crumpled heap in the back corner of the room. It's surrounded by crumpled candy wrappers and small muddy footprints made by what looks to be sneakers. An old, tattered comic book lies discarded at the centre of it.

"It looks like it was just a couple of kids who broke in here," Jim says. "Probably sheltering from that storm last night."

"That is a relief," Cobblepot says, but there's something bright and artificial about the tone of his voice that leads Jim to suspect that he'd known all along what his so-called 'attack' had really consisted of, and who his trespassers had been.

Not a wild goose chase, then, but a ruse, meant to draw Jim out here alone into the heart of Cobblepot's territory for some reason that it's likely best Jim doesn't wait around long enough to find out.

"Right," he says, edging towards the storeroom door, his hand dropping to his gun, "now that we—"

"Don't go," Cobblepot says, grabbing hold of the sleeve of Jim's jacket and holding him still.

Jim briskly shakes off his hand. "Oswald, I—"

"You look tired, Jim," Cobblepot says, his eyes softening with something that looks a little like concern. "And you've lost weight. Are you eating properly?"

The question, and the faintly chiding tone of voice in which it's asked remind Jim of his mother so strongly that he laughs despite himself. "Yes, I'm eating properly," he says, only just managing at the last possible moment to stop himself from adding the 'Mom' that feels like the natural conclusion to that statement.

"I don't believe you." Oswald's lips purse in disapproval. "You should dine with me this evening. Take a couple of hours to yourself to relax and recuperate."

Jim squints at him suspiciously, but Oswald's pale, angular face looks as guileless as it's capable of being. If this is a ruse, as he suspects, he very much doubts that its ultimate aim is ensuring that he's well-fed and rested. Likely, the food would turn out to be drugged or poisoned if he did decide to partake of it.

"I've got to go," he reiterates, heading towards the door again.

When he pushes it open, Cobblepot cries out, "I've got steak!" in a strident, strangled tone that smacks of desperation.

Nonetheless, Jim's mouth waters in a Pavlovian response to the mere sound of the word, and his stomach growls shamefully loud. It's been weeks since he last ate something that didn't come out of a can, and he _is_ tired, bone-deep weary, and exhausted, and hungrier than he ever lets himself acknowledge.

A little light poisoning is probably a fair trade for a good meal a spot on a comfortable chair for the evening.

"Fine," he concedes. "I'll take that steak and a couple of hours, but that's all you're going to get."

The triumphant smile Cobblepot beams at him is wide enough to rouse his suspicions all over again.


End file.
